Concerto for Contrabass and Orchestra is coming to life

Over the past 18 months, I have been working on a full-length concerto for contrabass and orchestra.  Although this project has been percolating for many years, it has just now finally made its way out of my brain, onto paper, and into the gifted hands friends and colleagues Todd Seeber and Heinrich Christensen.

Once the first movement was completed, I approached Todd and Heinrich about doing a recording, having already completed an orchestral reduction for organ.  In the spring of 2024 we were able to record and film it, and after managing various delays, we now have a final edit and mix.

The final concerto will be in four movements. The first movement features an orchestration with winds, limited brass (horns and tuba) and strings.  Movement 2 is orchestrated for percussion and solo contrabass only, followed by a 3rd movement for solo contrabass and bass choir.  The final movement’s orchestration features the full band, including winds, brass, percussion, and strings.

At the time of this writing, I am in the completing the final composition of the 2nd and 4th movements (movement 1 and 3 are already complete), with a target of completing the entire work in the early spring of 2025.

—GGR

Livestream premiere of "Threnody" April 7, 2022

YouTube Livestream link, ETSU Brass Faculty Recital

An evening of music for Brass Quintet, featuring faculty from the ETSU Department of Music. Program includes works by Zoe Cutler, Giovanni Gabrieli, Joan Tower, and Michael Kamen. This event will be held in ETSU’s Martin Center Recital Hall, 1328 W State of Franklin Rd, Johnson City, TN. Concert begins at 7:30 pm; Admission is free and open to the public. Contact: Cindy Godwin, 1-423-439-4276, godwinc@etsu.edu

I am pleased to announce the premiere of Threnody by the East Tennessee State University Faculty Brass Quintet (Sarah Fellenbaum and Brett Long, trumpets, Sean Donovan, horn, Justin Waller, trombone, and Steph Frye-Clark, tuba). The performance will take place Thursday, April 7, 2022 at 7:30pm Eastern Time, and will be live streamed on YouTube (see link above).

Composed in 2021, Threnody is in memory of composer/conductor Theodore Antoniou (1935-2018). As one of my composition teachers while at Boston University, Theodore was a supportive and influential mentor early on in my life as a composer. I met him for the first time when I was a 17-year-old student at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, where he came to speak about his musical life and trajectory. As part of the opening ceremonies for the BUTI students, we all performed as part of the chorus in a reading of his epic cantata Nenikikamen. The Greek title translates as “we are victorious”, and premiered at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich with enormous choral forces (over 1,000 singers if my memory serves). I remember Theodore as a fearless musician tackling enormously difficult musical projects, both within the scope of his own compositions and as a tireless proponent of other living composers’ works.

My musical tribute to Theodore attempts to convey my lasting impression of him. He was very proud of being Greek; he was champion of the music of his time; he had enormous energy and drive; he was supportive of his colleagues but did not suffer fools. I like to think of Threnody as both a celebration of Theodore as a powerful musician, and as a lament for a fallen hero.

—GGR

Theodore Antoniou at Tanglewood, July, 1980. Photo by Graham Gordon Ramsay.

Introspections #5: The Final Movement

Completed on August 10, 2020, the fifth introspection is the last in the series that began last April.  I started work on this movement on July 16 during a short personal retreat in Rockport, Massachusetts.  Removed from my urban Cambridge home and distanced slightly from the tensions related to the pandemic and political strife, I embarked on this trip with the goal of bringing my mind into a more peaceful state.

Marked “Poignantly, rubato throughout”, this movement picks up from the previous one (which ends with a low pedal note C), beginning in C major with a sparse and simple melody that recurs as the main theme throughout.  Acting as the denouement for the entire work, this movement serves as a self-reminder that there is always resolution after conflict, that positive change is inevitable after times of discord, and that there will always be things bigger and more important than my own personal angst.  Perspective is difficult during times of strife, but I believe it is essential, particularly during the bad times, to remind ourselves of the beauty and wonder of the world.

I offer my heartfelt thanks to Heinrich Christensen for his constant friendship and musical support throughout this project (and so many others). His willingness to take risks with new and unknown works is a gift of immeasurable value. Tak skal du have.

--G.G.R., November 10, 2020

Introspections #4

Introspections 4 is a marriage of three distinct musical ideas:

a repeating pedal line;

a second line of sustained open 5ths;

and counter melodies that are freely composed.

These three softly stated ideas overlap throughout, with the pedal line forming the foundation that binds all the ideas together.  Although each of these ideas are made to fit together, they all exist in their own distinct time and timbral spaces.  The pedal part for all practical purposes defines what should be a 4/4 time signature (a repeating pattern of 6 eighth notes followed by a quarter rest); the sustained open fifths happen with a rhythm that is more solidly rooted in 7/8 that is the official time signature of the piece (a pattern of half notes and dotted quarters making up each bar); and finally the free-formed counter melodies do their own thing, tying across bar lines or producing unpredictable rhythms to define their own independent ideas.  The result is somewhat unsettling, while all the while ambling along at a non-threatening easy walking tempo with delicate registration.

Approximately halfway through the movement, there is a slight pause while the registration changes from soft and sweet to full-on organ, loud and angry. “Shake the room” is the marking in the score; the pattern of open fifths becomes full chords over the walking pedal in an explosion of sound.  Finally, the work closes with a short, very soft and sparsely registered coda.

Introspections, #3: an off-kilter palate cleanser

As darkly unsettling as Introspections numbers 1 and 2 may be, number 3 is quirky and perhaps equally disturbing in a very different way.  This very short 55 second movement was also born at an early morning hour after I had awakened from a dream state.  The predominant feeling I was having was one of disorientation and disconnection, of intermittent and disrupted thought, difficult to pin down.  What I composed was this brief, spritely idea that never fully develops or shows itself.  I wanted to suggest a façade, something that is at its core not what it presents itself to be.  And just as it begins to take shape, it ends.

The piece opens with a very simple rapid four note motive that is followed by silence.  This pattern of motive-silence-motive-silence repeats throughout, but the duration of the silences differs each time they occur.  Initially, I composed each silence as a specific beat-duration of one or more bars of rest.  What became clear when Heinrich started to play the movement for me was the agony he was going through trying to be absolutely accurate with each of the resting silences, to a level that was driving him to distraction. 

This turned into one of those teachable moments where a performer shows a composer how not to do something.  I had never intended that the rests should be so meticulously counted to a level of mechanical accuracy.  Instead, I was hearing in my head a “lift”, a silence of approximate duration, where the silences would be longer or shorter as a way of playing with the listener’s expectation.  Because Heinrich was working so hard to make these silences metronomically accurate, it was clearly throwing him off when came time to play the notes!  After going back and forth with Heinrich to try and clarify my intentions, it became evident that I needed to renotate the silences to be less anxiety making.  In the final version, the silent bars became rests with fermatas, with a suggested approximate duration marked in seconds rather than absolute beats.  It was a simple change for me to make, but it is a perfect illustration of how my desire to clearly express my intention was thwarted by a notation that was unkind to the performer. 

This is one of the great joys of working with Heinrich as a collaborator: he teaches me new things every time I sit with him--a testament to his generosity, patience, and musicianship.

"Introspections #2"

Although Introspections #2 was composed first before the other movements in the set, it did not feel to me like it should be the opening for this collection of miniatures.  I do remember that the movement came out quickly—I started composing it after a fretful sleep one morning in April at about 3:30am, and when I looked up at the clock again at 8:45am, the movement was nearly complete.  So this movement, like most of the others, was born fast and without a lot of over-thinking.  My goal was to make something productive out of that moment of disquietude, to reflect on my state of mind, my mood.  I didn’t have a specific narrative in mind, but I suppose each listener will interpret the work with their own filters and story lines, which is as it should be. 

As always, Heinrich Christensen does a wonderful job interpreting this movement. He writes about his experience bringing it to life as follows:

The indications in Graham’s scores tend to be mostly dynamics, with occasional color references. So the goal is to create an aural representation of what those indications inspire as I look at them. On the organ, one always has to be mindful of practical considerations, for example the progression of a crescendo requires coupling divisions together, opening the swell pedal, pushing pistons, etc. 

For this piece, I started out with gentle foundation stops with just a touch of a discreet tremulant to diffuse the direct attack of the pitch. Setting up the crescendo, we start on the Swell manual with some brighter stops added, then progress to the Great, open the swell and add more stops as we go. It all goes away to get back to a subtle variation of the initial registration. The very end of the piece to my ear contains some very interesting harmonics - I personally hear the major third of the final chord long before I actually play it."


—G.G.R., July 29, 2020

 

 

 

 

“Introspections”: Processing Feelings about a World in Crisis

Introspections for Organ is a collection of short movements, composed out of a need to process my feelings about the very troubling times we are all experiencing during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and accompanying global social and political unrest.

Back in April I started having severe recurring nightmares.  Most often I can’t remember the details of these dreams, but invariably they involve the death of those that I love.  Frequently in these dreams I am fighting off some random foe bent on my destruction. I sometimes spend the better part of the dream defending myself, killing so as not to be killed, becoming exhausted in an endless parade of violence and despair. The dreams became so predictable in their general arc that I found myself thinking while still in the dream “not this again”.  I would admonish myself mid-dream for reenacting the same drama over and over again, night after night, ending by waking up in the early morning hours in a hugely anxious state.  It was during these early mornings that I began composing what became the “introspections” as a way to help me process what I was feeling.

I began composing these movements in April, and completed Introspection 1 on May 17, 2020 (for many year I have taken note the completion date of my compositions as a kind of diary entry—it helps me keep track of my pieces and place them in context).  The work starts with a slow, pianissimo ostinato pattern that sets the constant unrelenting pulse for the work, under which is set a very simple melodic line in the pedal.  The whole opening statement is somehow off-kilter, with the sustained melody entering and changing pitches always off the beat. This gives way to a plaintive, full organ fortissimo section. Throughout the piece there is a combination of constant driving beat pattern against slow, uncomfortable syncopations, finally moving the piece forward into complex, unconventional counterpoint that mimics in form traditional counterpoint, but not at all in harmonic substance.  The result is something that feels both very familiar (conventional even) and at the same time untoward.

My dear friend, the amazingly talented Heinrich Christensen, committed himself to learning these works as they are being composed (as of this writing, I am still adding movements to the work, with five nearly completed). We decided to record them (accomplished by social distancing and using a very long lens to film the sessions) and release one movement serially each week. As Heinrich put it, “It has been oddly cathartic to learn and live with (the introspections) as we transitioned from spring to summer with all the uncertainty of when we can return to any kind of normal life, and what exactly that might look like, especially for making music together.”

--G.G.R., July 23, 2020